Before the Black Zodiac
by kuroneko52
Summary: Sure, a violent death is part of making a ghost. But there's also who they were in the moments before their death. Rated for language, and gore in later ghosts' chapters.
1. The FirstBorn Son

**Disclaimer:** I don't own any rights to Thir13en Ghosts; this is just my interpretation of the ghosts right before they died.

Nyaa.

**=^'.'^=**

"Billy the Brat strikes again." Mr. Michaels hummed as he went through the newspaper.

He was speaking, of course, about his wife's 'good china' collection, which was usually on display in the dining room cabinet. Today, however, its shattered remains were all over the dining room floor, a screaming example of what happened when they took their eyes off of the boy for more than a few seconds.

"I swear, that boy needs to be shipped off to military school." Mrs. Michaels growled as she swept the mess up. "He never listens to anything he's told… It all just goes in one ear and out the other…"

"He's a boy. He'll grow out of it."

She gave a little 'hmph' as she got up, marching into the kitchen, heels clicking against the linoleum. As she emptied the dustpan into the trash, she said, "I wish you would _say_ something to him. For heaven's sake, it's the _man's_ job to instill discipline in the house!"

That was his cue; looking at his watch, Mr. Michaels quickly got up and went for the door. "Sorry, dear, gotta go! I just remembered that there's a meeting at work, really early. Love you!"

Mrs. Michaels rolled her eyes with an exasperated sigh.

"Mom! I'm goin' over to Danny's house to play!" Billy ran through the dining room.

"Wait just one second, young man!" He stopped in the living room, turning to see his mother with her hands on her hips. "Have you forgotten about the mess you made? The mess _I_ had to clean up?"

"No. What's that got to do with anything?" The seven-year-old boy frowned at her, braced like he was ready for a Western stand-off.

The woman frowned back. "Well, I think that you should at _least_ wear some normal clothes as punishment."

"Punishment for what? It was an accident! Besides, I like my cowboy clothes!" Billy stomped the rest of the way to the front door and opened it. "And it's not like you even used those stupid dishes, 'cept when Grandma came over, and she smells like cats!"

Mrs. Michaels put a hand to her face as the door slammed shut, rubbing the side of her head. The day that boy shaped up and started acting responsible couldn't come soon enough.

"Hey, Billy! What took ya so long?" Danny asked as the two boys met up where their front lawns connected.

"Ah, my mom was bitchin' and whinin' about some stupid thing or another." Billy was already using the language his cowboy heroes on TV used, right down to their tough accent. Messing with his headband, he nodded to the object in Danny's hand. "What'cha got there?"

"What, this?" Danny held up the crossbow and steel arrow. A sly grin spread across his face. "It's cool, right? I found it in my parents' closet. It's real, too!"

"Wow!" Both boys looked at it affectionately, thinking it was the most amazing thing in the world.

"Ya know what this calls for? A game of Scaredy-Cat." Danny pulled the steel arrow back until it locked in place.

"Scaredy-Cat?" Billy frowned. "What's that?"

"It's a game that separates the men from the boys. I heard that Injuns used it as a rite of passage." Danny held the crossbow up to his shoulder, looking down the line. "What they'd do is shoot an arrow straight up. If you ran away before it fell down, it meant you were a puss, and ya had to stay home with the women for another year."

"Well, I'm not a bitch." Billy muttered.

"Neither am I."

Now the two stood there, staring at the crossbow in anticipation this time. For a long moment, neither one spoke a word. They were two cowboys considering whether or not to listen to the little voice in their head telling them not to go through with this.

Finally, Billy spoke up. "Well… I'll do it if you do it, but if you're too scared…"

"I ain't scared!" Danny looked at his neighbor with his best game face on. "Let's do this, partner."

The crossbow's holder aimed it straight up and shot it off, and both boys stood there, staring into the sky as the dark dot flew ever upward. Neither one budged as the arrow turned and headed back down, each with his determination steeled by the horrible thought of what names the other would call him if he should move.

Danny's knee twitched the entire time, and when he saw the arrow's tip headed for them, he ran off, tossing the crossbow aside. Billy was knocked onto his side.

He rolled onto his back just in time to see the arrow up-close.

**=^'w'^=**

Well, that's the first one. Billy Michaels, the First-Born Son! Let's give 'im a hand, folks! His was the easiest, and therefore not that bloody, seeing as the ghosts suffered progressively more gruesome deaths. I went mostly with the back story for Billy that's posted on the movie website under the article "Misery Loves Company". I'll be bouncing back and forth between that, the back stories easily found on Wikipedia, and any other source that I stumble across or someone feels like sending me.

Nyaa.

Anyway, I've got other stuff to work on, but I'll post the next one when I can. Later!

Nyaa!


	2. The Torso

**Disclaimer:** I own no rights to either version of Thir13en Ghosts – not the 1960's original, nor its totally-awesome 2001 remake. These are just my interpretations of the ghosts' final moments before they became what they were in the remake.

Nyaa.

**=^'w'^=**

"_Trust me, Jimmy, you don't wanna get in over your head… your head… your head."_

Larry "Three-Times" had always tried warning his friend, but Jimmy never listened. Jimmy was a scam artist, a fast-talker, a man with a silver tongue. But now, stuck in the trunk of some rickety, run-down tin can on wheels, he wished he'd listened to his friend, rather than just expecting his luck to keep going.

"_It won't keep up for too long… too long… too long." Larry frowned, twitching as he spoke. "Y-You're gonna lose one time too many at this rate, Jimmy… Jimmy… Jimmy. J-Just promise me you've got an escape plan or somethin'… somethin'… somethin'!"_

In the end, he it wasn't anyone's fault, what happened to Larry. Jimmy was sure that he would understand – after all, he was the one who'd told him to have a back-up plan! So, Jimmy had told the boxer and bookies that Larry was gonna cover his debt and made a break for it. By the time anyone figured anything out, Jimmy had figured he'd be a long way from Vegas.

Boy, was he wrong.

Finally, the car screeched to a stop and turned off. Jimmy heard voices, right before light flooded his eyes and he was yanked out of the trunk by the front of his shirt.

"Hey! Lemme go! I can pay ya, I just need more time!" Jimmy tried pleading as he was dragged through the refinery.

"Take it up with the boss." The man dragging him shoved Jimmy ahead as they walked down some stairs into the basement level. It was getting cooler and darker, until they were in one of the secluded areas.

Jimmy didn't like secluded areas.

He was pushed into a chair, which faced the mob boss and the wrestler he owed. Both men had unreadable looks as Jimmy's head whipped around, trying to assess the situation.

"Jimmy "The Gambler" Gambino. Nice to see ya. How long's it been? Five… Six months since you started owin' me money?" The boss took a puff from his cigar, watching the smoke cloud disperse thoughtfully. "I've been givin' you chance after chance to pay me back, but instead you just keep making the hole bigger and bigger for yourself."

"I-I know this looks bad." Jimmy put up his hands defensively. "Really, I do. But it's just a little bad luck, that's all! Me and Three-Times, we've got a plan…"

"You don't have a _plaaan."_ The boss gave him the same sort of smile a dad gives his kids when he catches them stealing a cookie from the cookie jar. "Even if ya did, Larry wouldn't be able to help ya with it now."

Jimmy felt a lump in his throat. Not for Larry, but for himself. "…What?"

"Oh, don't worry. Larry told us everything when we went to collect _your_ debt. He didn't have a whole lot himself, but he gave it over to help out a friend. Then he told us where we might be able to find ya! _Real_ helpful kid, that Larry, _real_ helpful. In the end, I told my boys to make it quick and painless – just _one_ bullet to the brain, that's _aaall_ it took."

Hearing the details of his old friend's death made the lump in Jimmy's throat all the more unbearable. Somehow, he didn't expect that he was going to get the same 'quick and painless' kindness that Larry had received.

The mob boss took a few calculated steps forward. "Ya know why they call my boy here the Butcher?"

Suddenly, Jimmy was jumped by the man who'd dragged him downstairs. He found himself being tied down to the chair. Instantly, he began to kick and struggle and scream, praying to God above that someone would hear him. That this was all a horrible dream, some kind of nightmare that he'd wake up from as soon as his heart picked up enough.

"See, in the ring, my boy's got a knack for cuttin' down his opponents, so callin' him the Butcher caught on real fast." The boss walked over to the wrestler and patted the lightweight on the shoulder. "He doesn't look like much, but he's smart, like a wolf or somethin'. Just as vicious, too. That's why he can fight outside his weight class and make himself some real cash compared to those other fuckin' fairies that call themselves wrestlers. But there's another reason they call him the Butcher."

The Butcher was staring down Jimmy with a blank stare that the Gambler had previously thought was a testament to his intellect. Now, too late, Jimmy realized that the wrestler didn't have that look because he'd been smacked in the head too many times. It was because the Butcher was one of those guys that were numb inside – no heart, no conscience, no empathy.

As if to back up Jimmy's thoughts, the lightweight picked up a hedge trimmer. Not a meat cleaver, not a chainsaw, a fucking hedge trimmer.

"My son." The boss smiled at the wrestler. "My pride and joy. Blood and screamin' and pain… Those things don't bother him. In fact, when it ain't his own _blood_ and _screamin'_ and _pain,_ he kinda gets a kick out of it. So, when I have some fucking loser who can't pull his head out of his ass and pay me my fuckin' money…" – He gave Jimmy a dark look, then walked towards the door. – "…Play nice with my boy, Jimmy."

"No! Wait!" Jimmy's pulse spiked as the Butcher walked closer, starting up the mechanism. "Wait, please! Gimme another chance! I promise, I won't gamble until I've paid ya back! Please! Ya gotta give me another fuckin' chance!"

He shrieked as the hedge trimmer dug into his belly, grazing his spine. Tears shot to his eyes as he looked into the cold darkness of the Butcher's gaze. There was nothing there, and Jimmy realized that that was what he'd be reduced to if he didn't get out of this situation.

"Butcher, r-right?" Jimmy choked as blood trailed up his throat, spitting it onto his own lap. "L-Listen… I was… I was gonna pay ya back…"

Another scream as the teeth of the machine bit into his left knee. He wailed out a plea for it to stop as his right knee was cut in half as well. His legs were gone! Oh, God, his legs were gone!

"Please! Fuckin'… J-Just listen!" Jimmy yelled as the Butcher picked up a leg, looking at it closely. "Ya can't do this to me! I don't deserve this!"

"Daddy wants you to be wrapped up into itty, bitty pieces. Says he's got about 8 other people who need to be sent a message." the Butcher finally said. Raising his eyes from the leg to Jimmy, he smiled and said, "I think I can make 12 messages outta _you."_

Jimmy felt the cold bite of blood draining from his face. As he sputtered, trying to think of something, he found, for the first time in his life, he was out of words.

The trimmer jammed into an elbow, revving viciously as it wiggled to find the easy places to eat through. If it weren't for all of the pain on top of it, Jimmy would have noticed the strange, tickling jolt that was accompanied by it. When this treatment was repeated on the other elbow, his brain actually registered a little of the sensation.

"My old man was telling the truth when he said I was smart in the ring, but in _this_ ring, the one you and I are in right now, it's more like OCD." The Butcher tossed Jimmy's useless forearms aside. "I think Larry can tell ya somethin' about that."

Now the hedge trimmer dug into Jimmy's right shoulder, curling its way around his ball-and-socket joint. He howled at the pain and jumble of nerves, ultimately regurgitating blood onto himself. As the Butcher turned his attention to the other shoulder, he could just be heard over the gnawing of metal and cartilage: "You held out longer than most! Usually, they lose their guts the second I tear into their knees or elbows!"

The most endurable pain was when the Butcher returned the hedge trimmer to Jimmy's waist. Whether it was because it was already roaring in slightly-dulled pain, or because there wasn't a weird sensation of nerve knots being ripped apart until the Butcher got to the spine, Jimmy didn't really know or care. He was too busy screaming every profanity he knew at the top of his lungs, all the while demanding that he be put out of his misery now. The pain made the minutes feel like hours, and it didn't matter whether it was his arm getting cut into, or his neck.

His neck?

Jimmy's eyes bulged in their sockets when he felt the teeth of the trimmer against his throat. No. He'd lost a lot of blood, so surely he wouldn't have to live through this! If God was merciful, this wasn't what his last feelings would be. Where was his flashback to the greatest and worst moments of his life?

The Butcher loved this part the most, pushing slowly into his victim's throat as the hedge trimmer ate away at flesh and bone. Jimmy tried to scream, but, of course, couldn't. He could only gape and gurgle as blood and, eventually, spinal fluid escaped from his mouth. The fear and pain grew and grew, finally coming to a peak before the light left his eyes.

While he wrapped his father's messages in their envelopes of cellophane, the Butcher couldn't help admiring his handiwork. He smirked, looking into the eyes of Jimmy "The Gambler" Gambino's severed head, which were now as empty as his own.

**=^nwn^=**

I love methodical delimbing! Don't you? This may have been a little too methodical, but… oh well…

Nyaa…


	3. The Bound Woman

**Disclaimer:** I don't own copyrights to 13 / Thir13en Ghosts. But I loved the concept that each ghost had so much thought put into their stories, so I came up with this.

Nyaa.

**=^owo^=**

"Hey, did you see who Suzie was sucking face with out in the parking lot?"

"Certainly not her Prom King!" The two girls exchanged a curt chuckle before returning to applying their makeup in the girl's room mirror. "Honestly, I'm not surprised, but you'd think that the girl would spend _one_ night being faithful to a boyfriend. At least on Prom Night, ya know?"

"Yeah, tell me about it. Way to reinforce the slutty-cheerleader stereotype." The first girl touched up her lipstick, puckering in the mirror and straightening up. "I wonder if she knows that even the geeks are making fun of her?"

"Probably not. She's such a dumb whore."

This wasn't the only conversation going on about Susan LeGrow, nor was it the first. Susan was the popular, pretty cheerleader with the rich parents who just had to pout to get what she wanted. Most spectators – and in a small town like theirs, there were a _lot_ of spectators at the high school – would say that she had no idea what she wanted, and that it changed more regularly than her socks.

But Suzie knew exactly what she wanted. She wanted to date the star quarterback, Chet Walters. She wanted to be the high school cheerleader who dated the sexy football player and married her high school sweetheart. It was merely a sad coincidence that she also happened to want the bad boy on the side.

"Oo, Billy Bob…" She giggled and cooed as the boy bit softly into her neck, giving her tingles all over.

After the dance, many of the students had taken the after-party to the nearby motel, most of them rowdy and happy than anything else. Then again, there was a reason that many parents worried about their daughters losing their virginity on Prom Night; the rumor has been widespread fact longer than many adults will admit.

Of course, this wouldn't be Suzie's first time, even if it _had_ gone through.

She screamed as the motel door was slammed shut; neither of them had seen Chet walk into the motel room. He was dumbstruck, Billy Bob instantly threw up his hands where they could be seen, and Susan backed up to the headboard, hugging her skirt around her legs.

"Chet! I-It's not what it looks like!" she said.

He looked between the two, pacing from side to side as his thoughts went through the rounds. "I didn't wanna believe the rumors… Suzie, how long has this been goin' on?" he asked.

"Whoa, man, it's okay, this was just a one-time thing…" Billy Bob started, taking a step forward.

"I'm _talking_ to her! Fuck off!" Chet snarled, clenching his fists. He turned his angry expression back on Susan. "You said you didn't slut around anymore!"

"I'm _not_ 'slutting around'!" Susan summoned forth the tears that had gotten her out of so many tight situations in the past. "I-I wasn't thinking! I'm sorry, it was just gonna be this once…"

"I gave you my class ring! I _proposed_ to you on the football field where we first met! Then you go and… and… spread your legs for a poke from this asshole?"

Billy Bob's eyes narrowed as he started forward. Nobody made him look like shit! "Listen here you son of a bitch – "

Chet grabbed the motel room phone and cracked the corner into Billy Bob's skull with all his might. Blood was gushing from the wound before the 'bad boy' of Suzie's fancy even hit the ground.

She screamed, watching in horror as Chet stomped on Billy Bob's rib cage, again and again, until she heard the bones crackle and break. When her fiancé's angry eyes turned back on her, she jumped, covering her mouth as, for the first time in years, _real_ tears started to pour from her eyes.

This wasn't what she wanted.

"Hey, baby, we need to have a talk."

* * *

><p>"Chet, please. It was gonna be the last time, I <em>swear."<em>

She sat and trembled as she stood, watching helplessly as he dug a hole for Billy Bob's body. Her hands were tied behind her back, not that she'd be able to find help at this time of night. Chet stormed over to the car, jaw set as he threw the shovel in the back seat.

They were at the 50-yard line of the high school football field. Susan let out a strained sob, recognizing the first place she and Chet had met, and she'd gotten it into her head that she was going to marry him. The place where he had proposed to her. There was something morbidly romantic about knowing that this was where he planned to hide Billy Bob's body.

"I can't believe this is happening." he grumbled, tearing off his tie. "I can't believe I was stupid enough to believe a slut like you."

Susan looked at him, her eyes large and shiny from the crying she'd done. "Do you… Do you think they'll find him here…?"

He shot her a hard glare. "How fucking retarded are you?"

The back of Chet's hand struck her hard across the face, sending her down. Before she knew what was happening, he was on top of her, wrapping his tie around Susan's neck and pulling it as tightly as she could. She tried to scream, but some other strange, animal sound came out instead.

No. No! This isn't how it was supposed to end! Susan LeGrow stared into Chet's eyes, horrified and tear-stained. At any minute, he would see that this was a mistake. He would let her go. They were in love, after all; they could get past this, right? They were supposed to get married, and grow old together, and have a family of their own! This was all because she'd been a stupid, spoiled little girl and hadn't been satisfied with having the man of her dreams. She hadn't ignored the temptation of seducing Billy Bob just because he'd shown her a little attention.

Now that mistake was costing her her life.

"I loved you." he hissed at her venomously through clenched teeth. "You broke my heart, you fucking bitch."

There was a snap as the constant pressure of his attack broke her neck. For several long minutes, he scowled into her dead eyes, unaware that her last thoughts were of him, and that she really had loved him. He didn't know that she had even given up a free ride through college on an athletic scholarship just to be with him. Even if he did know all of those things, he probably wouldn't have cared, because the simple fact remained the same: Suzie had broken his heart and was willing to fuck another man that wasn't him.

…A year later two girls were at Prom, gossiping in the bathroom as they fixed their makeup, much as they had a year before when they were just juniors.

"Hey, remember that murder last year?"

"You mean the one where Suzie got killed by her beau, Chet?"

"Yeah, I heard something really twisted! Apparently, right before they stuck the needle in him, he got all self-righteous. He said something really creepy, like 'the bitch broke my heart, so I broke her neck' or something."

The second girl looked at her friend, eyebrows raised. "Wow. Well, I can't say I blame him. I mean, she was a slut. Everyone in town knew it."

"True." The first girl sighed. "Still, I wonder why he buried her at the 50-yard line."

"Who knows. Maybe it had something to do with him being a football player and her being a cheerleader. I'll never understand the popular crowd."

**=^nwn^=**

There you have it! The Bound Woman, Susan LeGrow. This plot was mainly taken from the source on Wikipedia, but Billy Bob's name was taken from "Misery Loves Company"; I'm thinkin' the guy who came up with their basic back stories had something against someone named Billy. XD;; Maybe Billy owed him money. I dunno.

Nyaa.


	4. The Withered Lover

**Disclaimer:** I don't own any rights to Thir13en Ghosts, original or remake. I didn't come up with a single character or back story… but they're very interesting to play with, aren't they?

**=^nwn^=**

As soon as she saw the blaze from a distance, she knew something was wrong. From four blocks away, her heart was hammering in her chest. From two blocks, her heart was in her throat. Jean Kriticos couldn't get to the house fast enough. Maybe it was paranoia, and maybe it was just maternal instinct, but either way there was a voice in the back of her head, shrieking at her that her children were in trouble, that she needed to hurry immediately.

She leapt out of her car as soon as she pulled up next to the fire trucks. "My kids!" She gave one of the firefighters who ran up to her a wild look. "Where are my kids?"

"Ma'am, please remain calm…" he started.

Bad sign. "No! That's my house. Where are my kids?"

"We're doing everything we can right now… Wait, Ma'am!" She dove under his arm and flew by the others with the agility of a cat, running into her house when she heard her daughter screaming from inside.

Jean brought up an arm to shield her face as she hit what felt like a physical wall of heat. It didn't stop her for more than a moment, before she dove into the furnace fearlessly.

"Kathy! Bobby!" The roar of the flames in her ears was deafening, and the smoke assaulted her eyes while also burning its way through her nose and throat. Self-preservation couldn't even kick in through the volume of her motherly duty to make sure her children were safe.

She pushed further in, snapping to attention when she heard something nearby: The voice of her baby boy! Knowing Bobby, he would be hiding in his room. She could be sure Kathy would be with him, trying to protect her little brother. Her feet immediately propelled her down the bedroom hallway. "Bobby! Can you hear me, honey? Kathy!"

Pictures on the walls burned slowly in their frames, only one or two bothering to actually fall from their places. Jean tried to ignore them, but she couldn't help the image they brought to her – the happy memories, frozen in time; her husband, her children, herself; it was all going up in flames.

Her entire life was going to burn to the ground if she couldn't find her kids.

She started with the room furthest down the hallway: Her and Arthur's bedroom. Jean ran over to check the far side of the bed, the bathroom, and the closet, but they weren't in any of these places. Worry churned in her stomach along with the smell of the ash and smoke. She had to fight the urge to vomit before she could move on.

Jean shoved the bathroom door open, hissing in pain at the heat that attacked her in return. A quick look inside told her that her son and daughter weren't in this room, either.

Sweat was trying to come forth and cool her down, but it couldn't stay long enough in the face of the flames around her. Something cracked overhead as she ventured into Bobby's room. She checked every corner, then the closet, and even under his bed, just to make sure. There was no one in this room, either, so hopefully…

Before Jean could get out of the room, something crashed into her side. It was solid and white-hot. She crashed to the floor, and whatever knocked her down fell on top of her. The pain was intense as it seared her face and side.

She thought she heard her husband's voice somewhere, calling for their kids. She tried to shove the burning beam off of her side, or call out for help, but her strength was failing her. The darkness was closing around her, and it wasn't wasting any time.

Jean tried one last time to call out as she saw figures moving in the smoke outside of the room. A single silhouette ducked into the room across from Bobby's – Kathy's room – and three fled back out into the yard. Was it really her kids being saved, or was it an illusion made up by her desperate imagination?

The darkness crowded around her vision. The last thing she heard was the incredibly distant sound of her husband's voice, crying out her name.

**=^'w'^=**

So, this one was about as short as the first one was. It was actually notorious trying to come up with a good way to portray this one – while tragic, Jean Kriticos' death wasn't brought about by something that she did wrong, but by something that she did out of love. Since I'm not a real big fan of the sad or lovey-dovey ghost stories – give me a crazy, homicidal ghost or even just a stupid heathen who's about to die and doesn't realize they shouldn't poke at violent maniacs any day – it took awhile for me to get into the mood to write this one… So, I wrote it while I was watching the movie Fragile.

Lovely crazy-ghost story.

Nyaa.


	5. The Torn Prince

**Disclaimer:** I do not own rights to Thir13en Ghosts. It would be neat if I did, though. :D …But I don't.

…Nyaa.

**=^v.v^=**

The year was 1957. It was the year that Sputnik 1 would be launched by the Soviet Union, Britain would test the first hydrogen bomb, and nine black students would have to be escorted to a formerly all-white school by the US Army, courtesy of President Eisenhower.

But those were things that Royce Clayton wouldn't see. Not because he didn't care – it was, after all, a day and age where the news stations were still looked to as a source of information in the areas of international happenings, scientific breakthroughs, and social-cultural matters of all sorts. Baseball was the national pastime, and everyone in the Valley High School community thought that he was destined to become a famous star in just that sport.

He was the next James Dean in his own mind, and he even had his own version of the famous 'Little Bastard' to race. He called it 'Hell's Fury' with all the certainty that one day the fame of both car and driver would one day eclipse that of the two-years-deceased actor.

Of course, Royce wasn't the only one who fancied himself James Dean's heir. There was another bad boy at Valley High: a greaser named Johnny, a much more likely candidate than "some jock who wore a letterman jacket." To top things off, Johnny had a race car of his own, and had cockily named it 'The Real Bastard.'

Naturally, the only answer was for the two teens to race. Since it was in James Dean's honor, more or less, it would have to be a drag race.

All of the Valley High students came out to watch.

"Okay! The race goes past the Green Garden Nursery, down Main Street, past the baseball diamond, and ends right back here!" Johnny's right-hand man barked out to the contestants and their excited audience at the starting line overlooking much of the small town. He pointed to a stretch of road that led from the bottom of the hill and curved over the baseball field of the high school back to where they were. "Keep your eyes peeled when you're drivin' back up here – there's a couple of rough patches that'll give ya a spill if you're not careful!"

With that, they were off, with Royce in the lead right from the get-go. He shot down the road passing the greenhouses, Johnny's headlights bright in his rearview mirrors. Royce let out a laugh. Like some dumb greaser could compete with a man like him!

Main Street brought them through town and ran the risk of attracting the attention of the police, but Royce was fine with running the risk. So was Johnny, who was keeping the same distance behind him. He smirked at the jock when they caught eyes in the side mirror of Hell's Fury.

"Yeah, yeah… Keep smilin', ya filthy greaser. Keep smilin' all the way into second place." Royce muttered under his breath. He returned his eyes to the road. "He's just tryin' to psych me out. That's it. The dumbass ain't smart enough to know when he's losin', that's all…"

As he came to the turn around the high school and sports field, he discovered why Johnny was hanging back, and why he was laughing at the competition.

By now, Royce was going 60 or 70 miles an hour – pretty high speed for the time. He caught a glimpse of his home turf, the baseball diamond, and a cocky grin spread across his face. He really was the next James Dean. He was king of his domain, and his domain was everything he tried his hand at.

When he looked back, he saw the rough patch coming up quick. With a shout, he stomped his foot on the breaks. Nothing happened. He stomped a few more times without give.

Johnny had cut his brakes.

Royce cussed as his tires dove into the rough patch, bouncing the entire car into the air before it came down hard. He fought to regain control of the swerving vehicle before opening his door and jumping out in an ill-fated escape attempt. The door swung back, shutting on his foot and dragging him along.

First he kissed asphalt. Then, after a bounce, he ate it… or, rather, it ate him, chewing off the left side of his face. He let out a shriek as the car flew over the hillside, taking him with it as it rolled in the air. With every hop down the cliff, it jostled from one side to another, eventually flipping over completely before reaching the edge of the leveled field.

When the rest of the students got to the scene of carnage, Royce was missing half of his face – half of his upper body, really. He was almost beyond recognition, save for the left half, which had survived the horrible crash with all of its pretty-boy features intact, albeit a little blood-spattered.

He choked, convulsing as he spat up blood. One of his fangirls screamed at her brother to get to a phone, or the hospital, or the police. Other teens ran in fear of being found at the scene, while still more of his fans stuck around. They were devastated and paralyzed with fear, unable to do anything as their baseball star continued to fade.

Desperately, Royce tried to look around, but all he could see was the baseball diamond, its white lines barely illuminated by the moonlight, just enough for him to make it out. His kingdom was slipping away from him.

This was all Johnny's fault. He just knew it. Royce felt rage just before his death throes – rage, and the sensation of holding his bat in his hands.

* * *

><p>A month had gone by since Royce Clayton's demise when the County Sherriff found himself being called to the Valley High baseball diamond for the second time in such a short while. A body had been found, and this one looked like hands-on murder, as opposed to the accident that he had ruled the Clayton boy's death as.<p>

There were a couple of cops at the scene already as he walked up. They looked grim, standing around the blood-soaked white sheet. Johnny's second-in-command was talking to a cop in what could only be surmised as incoherent babble as his mind tried to make sense of what it was he had witnessed.

The Sherriff walked up and, taking a moment to compose himself, lifted the sheet.

The sight of Johnny's broken body met his eyes, the most notable detail being his bashed-in skull, which was now mush. Mush of bone, pulp and brain matter.

"Who do we think it was?" he asked solemnly. Even the death of the local miscreant was a tragic event.

"Well, if we're to believe his friend over there…" The photographer cast a sympathetic glance over at Johnny's pal. "Poor kid's obviously grief-stricken. He says it was Royce Clayton, come back from the dead. Raw hamburger for half his face and everything."

The Sherriff frowned and looked up at the hilltop, where Clayton's grave overlooked the very field they stood in. "Poor kid. Here's hopin' they both find a place with God."

**=^ò_ó^=**

Not to speak ill of the dead, but… ROYCE CLAYTON, YOU 50'S-ERA DOUCHE! DDDX

I can't explain it! I had been trying for _months_ to write this ghost's death scene. Every time I tried to start it, my mind just took a hike. I even did a few stream-of-conscious writings on the brat to get the writing juices going. Usually, this works for me. But would it work for this guy's story? Hell no!

Nyaa!

So, finally, I sat down, just me and SyFy channel, and powered through it, lest some jock dick beat me at cranking out his demise. Worth it – in the end, I won, after all. I actually liked looking up the facts I put at the beginning just to step on this ghost's toes…

Nyaa…

Anyway, I'm glad I got it out, and I really do apologize for not elaborating more on this character. It was the first time really working in a different time era, and though I know some personalities are immortal, the voice they take on always changes. I hope I'll be able to portray him better in the crossover I'm working on…

Here's hopin'!

Nyaa! =^n.n^=


	6. The Angry Princess

**Disclaimer:** I own no rights to the 13 Ghosts franchise. If I did… Robert Downey Jr. probably would have been one of the ghosts. And he'd have been creepy as hell.

Nyaa.

**=^nwn^=**

"Beauty the Beast" they called her. Dana Newman agreed with the "Beast" part, but "Beauty" eluded her.

As she sat with her hand-mirror in her lap, she stared back. She felt as if she could see and feel every flake of dead skin and each dirt-filled pore on the cellular level. Her breasts were misshapen and warped, her fingers gnarled from working and – was it just her, or was her nose looking more and more pig-like by the second?

Of course, this wasn't true. Dana was mentally disturbed, but she certainly wasn't as hideous as she thought. When she was young, she had been willowy with flawless ivory-cream skin and fair hair. Her eyes, she'd been told, were her best feature; they had been wild and green from the day she was born, the epitome of an untamable beauty.

But in that wild look belied the small seed of her madness. She was unable to see what made her so lovely, even when she was told by everyone around her. Her mother and father thought she was just being humble when she tried to deny it, but by high school she had become unpopular for shooting down compliments with remarks of her imperfections – imperfections that no one else could see.

Dana's smarter boyfriends picked up on it, using it to their advantage. They ridiculed her, telling her how lucky she was that she was dating whatever man at the time; it ranged from them telling her that she was just plain, to them blowing everything out of proportions the way she did. Her less-than-intelligent boyfriends would just explode at her for being a crazy bitch.

Tears ran down her face as she looked at the product of years of nose jobs, plastic surgery, even the occasional attempt at do-it-yourself jobs from when she had worked for a plastic surgeon. One of her eyes had a permanently-enlarged pupil from just such an attempt, which had left her blind in that eye.

It was poetic, she realized now as she touched the glass, tracing that very feature in her reflection. She knew that she must be sick. How could so many people tell her she was beautiful? She had grown up blind to the truth, and now she was blinded by the lie she'd been feeding herself for so many years. Dana had chased perfection for years, throwing a tantrum that rivaled a spoiled three-year-old every time her makeup smeared or her hair fell out of place. She'd been embarrassing herself and anyone who called her their loved one and meant it, but she was too stupid to know what she was doing.

"Beauty the Beast… I'm just a monster, destroying everything I touch." she lamented bitterly. Her lower lip trembled and she looked away for a moment.

Bare walls met her gaze. She had one or two pictures of her family and friends, but none of herself. She couldn't stand to look at herself most of the time, perceiving that the camera had always missed her perfection by just a single second any time it had captured her.

Yet there were mirrors in her house. Many of them, and always at least two that were large. As Dana caught sight of herself in her boudoir mirror, she found herself drawn from her bed to sit among the collection of makeup, brushes and jewelry. She looked at the collection of lotions and other beauty products and wondered if maybe, just maybe, she was Vanity born into a human guise.

She looked at her reflection again. Countless breast implants had given her a miraculous rack, but she no longer had any feeling in them, making that one less pleasure zone during sex. In fact, her lower pleasure zones were also fairly useless, and for the same reasons: some years ago she had participated in a clinical study for a hair-removal lotion. It worked fine on limbs and underarms, but she had been in a fit of psyche when she'd smeared the stuff on her nether regions. It had permanently removed the hair, but she was numb from a mild chemical burn that had affected the sensitive skin.

None of her lovers since the accident had ever said anything about it, but even now she could see the scars as if they were freshly-burned. The image wasn't as strong as usual, and if she actually tried to tell herself, at length, that it was just her mind, she could actually see real skin, flawless and unmarred, on any part of her body.

"Why?" Dana looked at her hands as they began to fluctuate back and forth from the dry, old-woman talons she was used to, and younger flesh that was probably how they really looked. "Why is this me? Was I bad? Did I barf on a fucking gypsy as a baby?"

She winced, curling in on herself as she realized how delusional and pathetic she sounded. Sobs finally broke though, and she couldn't help it as she cried like a broken, beaten child. Inside, she felt hollow and empty, and it only pained her further to know that that was part of her illness.

Then Dana looked up at the mirror. She looked at her bloodshot eyes, her tear-stained cheeks and red, running nose.

"Useless." she breathed, vacantly batting her eyelashes at the image of herself. "It's useless. I'll never look nice, not to myself… I can try every beauty treatment in the world, but I'll never… I'll never…"

A numbing chill crept over her body, different from the usual physical feeling. Her entire body went cold as her broken, logical mind swept aside her frantic emotions. There was only one thing for her to do. Like with every other imperfection she'd ever had, only a knife could fix this problem.

Tilting her head slightly to one side, Dana decided, "I need a beauty bath…"

She got the butcher knife from her kitchen set and sat calmly with it as she let the bath fill. The clear water pouring out of the old-fashioned faucet was lovely as it caught the light with its strange, little waves and rushes. The porcelain of the tub itself was beautiful, too, as was its brass fixtures – scuffed-up and faded with age, but that was the appeal of it. The age of the object made it wonderful to look at.

She was about to do the same thing to herself. A small, empty smile tugged at her lips. "Poetic…"

Dana got into the water slowly, bringing up handfuls to run over her face and hair. Water always brought the promise of cleansing. Water was always perfect; filth could mix into it, sit on top of it, lie within it, but it could never _be_ one with the water. Water shunned everything that wasn't perfect.

But she knew how to become one with the water. Not in body, of course, but there was a chance that perhaps her everlasting soul would merge with it and become just as beautiful as the water.

She barely felt the first cut she made, which ran along her inner thigh. So did the second one. As she drew the third along a wrist, she wondered when she had picked the knife back up from the bath's lip. She watched it open her other wrist, mesmerized as the red liquid ran from her body and mixed into the water. Red clouds were rising everywhere, neither settling nor rising, nor mixing. An even crimson color took over the entire body of water.

Dana felt a manic sort of delight. "I knew it." She giggled a little, delirious from mental sickness and blood loss. "I knew it! I knew it! _I knew it!"_

She began stabbing herself repeatedly, chanting the mantra as she did. She was frantic as she thrashed in the water and blood, numb to the wounds and pain she was inflicting on herself. If she thought of her loved ones, she could only see the ways in which their lives would be better without her. Yes, they would hurt at first, and probably even call her selfish, but eventually, they would move on with their lives and remember her fondly…

Wouldn't they?

Slowly her energy burned out, and Dana dropped the knife out of the tub as her breaths struggled to sustain her. Little by little, her mind calmed down, even beginning to grow a little more coherent.

In her clarity, she realized what she had done, and her humanity returned.

"No…" Tears welled up in her eyes with the weak cry. "No, please, no…"

She squeezed her eyes shut and turned her head, as if she could simply ignore the pain that was beginning to make itself known. But she couldn't. This was one imperfection that would never go away, that she could never live down. Once again, she had failed to solve her problems with a blade and only made the situation worse.

Like her blinded eye with its enlarged pit of darkness.

Dana prayed silently that someone would come to visit her and know that something was up. She bartered and promised to never let another man tell her she was ugly, or plain, and she said that she would never say that she wasn't beautiful, even if she survived with jagged, thick scars all over her body.

But it wasn't meant to be. Beauty had killed the Beast.

**=^T_T^=**

Haaa… On the one hand, I'm glad I came up with hers so quickly; on the other hand, I am always disturbed by how I relate to Dana. Not with appearance issues or anything – I bounce between low self-esteem and borderline narcissism the same way any woman does. From "Ugh, I hate the pores on my nose…" in the morning to "Fuck, my hair looks fantastic!" at night, or vice versa.

The mindset of a suicide victim is a terrible place to find one's self. Your logic, in spite of being destroyed, seems very smart at the time. It all makes sense in the most negative way. No matter how knowledgeable you are, how deep you fancy your soul to be, those who suffer any imbalance that makes them want to kill themselves can only rely on what strength they can muster to hold onto that strange thing that can both save them or kill them.

Hope is a very debilitating thing, my friends. It can take you to your highest pinnacle of possibilities, and it can slam you to your hands and knees and make you kiss dirt. You have to learn when you're being too down on things as to be pessimistic without seeing the reality, just as those with faith need to know when they're being too dependent on their religion and forget that spirituality is very different at times.

Nyaa.


	7. The Pilgrimess

**Disclaimer:**__I own no rights to either version of Thir13en Ghosts… But the old one had a flaming skeleton in it! Mm, pyromania…

Nyaa…

**=^-w-^=**

Isabella Smith was fading fast in the heat of the sun. The elements had not been kind to her these past couple of weeks, but what had really been cruel to her was the townspeople. The New World was supposed to be a place of new opportunities, a new life; she had wanted to live somewhere warm and accepting.

As the sun continued to beat down on her, she supposed that she had technically gotten one of her wishes…

"Witch! Witch!" A few children ran over to the stocks. The moment that they could see the whites of Isabella's eyes, they stopped and began picking up stones to throw at her. "Go back to Hell, Witch!"

Isabella grunted, wincing away as the rocks hit the wood locked around her wrists and neck. One rock smacked against her forehead and she screeched in pain.

The little monsters laughed, but shrank back when the furious woman scowled at them. "I'll see you all _dead!"_

The children screamed and ran away in terror.

She sighed as her anger quickly left; she was too tired, and curses never got a Witch anywhere. Why, simply _being_ a Witch was what had gotten her into this mess in the first place!

It had started only a few months ago, barely even a week after she had arrived in America. Right from the get-go, Isabella was regarded with hostility from the townspeople simply because she was new, and when it became apparent that she didn't go to church as the colonists did, she was treated with further disdain. She was a Pagan among Christians, and they were not the sort to believe in the kindness that they claimed their God preached.

When their cattle and other livestock began to become weak and sick, they were distraught, and thought some other force was responsible. Something evil and supernatural, and not at all the fault of diseases that they might be unfamiliar with.

They were right.

A lifelong Witch, Isabella had known right away that the guardians of this land's native peoples were angry with the colonists; apparently she was not the first 'devil worshipper' that they had shunned. The spirits of the land whispered to her at night, and when she slept, they showed her what had happened through her dreams.

The first of the religious colonists were pilgrims, much as she was, but they had been shunned from their parent church for being too hard-hearted, or had simply taken too much to heart warnings that the New World might be filled with evils that had been banished from Europe to the other corners of the world. When they encountered the Native American tribes, and saw that they wore less clothing and spoke in strange tongues as well as to strange Gods and spirits, the Europeans attacked with the sort of rabid violence that only the sickeningly scared could muster.

In her dreams, Isabella bore witness to the white man's sin: She watched him burn women and children alive, beat animal brethren of the tribe, even try to exorcise warriors of a devil that did not exist in them. She watched the red people flee to their brother and sister tribes to the west, north and south, listened as they relayed news of what had happened to their people and mourned the dead who they could not give a proper burial. She felt overwhelming sympathy for both sides; the Natives for being so disgustingly wronged, and the Europeans for being so dishearteningly stupid and blind.

When the colony's pastor came to her home and tried to accuse her of the plagues that befell their land and animals, Isabella told him who was really at fault. Perhaps it would have been in her best interest to simply keep quiet, just as it would have been easier if she simply went to their house of worship without actually putting her faith in their God. But, had she gone to their church, she would have been lying to them, to the spirits who watched over them, and to herself and her Gods. She tried to tell the man what was really attacking his people, but only because she wanted the pastor and his flock to have the opportunity to change, and try to remedy the things that they had done.

"There's the murderess." Two women were walking by the stocks now, scowling shiftily in Isabella's direction. They regarded her as if she were a dangerous animal, rather than a human being… as though, somehow, she were less-worthy of breathing than they were.

"I heard someone saw her mating with the Devil and dancing naked in the woods."

"Of course she must have… She survived the fire because she is one of the Devil's whores."

Isabella paid them no mind; unlike the children whom had attacked her, they were smart enough to see what was right in front of them.

After trying to warn the pastor, the man had fallen ill. He had believed what she had told him, and knew that, perhaps, his people should send gifts and apologies to the Native Americans that they had wronged, but he was too much a coward to admit that he was wrong. The spirits, however, knew the nature of his heart, because they spoke to the Angels and God that Christians worship. Their Heavenly Father was disappointed in the weakness that one of his chosen humans had displayed, not by doing wrong in the first place, but by acting as if that wrong was something earned.

Their God gave the Natives' Gods and spirits permission to take the colonists, staring with the pastor who had so grievously disappointed Him.

The Pagan Native spirits jumped on the opportunity, sending their natural diseases to plague the white men and women, robbing them of their children and elders easily. Starving due to their lack of crops and livestock, the humans were being picked off at a terrible rate.

Naturally, they blamed Isabella. After all, their pastor had died after visiting _her._

She had run from the mob when they came after her with torches and pitchforks, chasing her as if she were the embodiment of evil that they so feared. They chased her into a barn, which they then lit on fire. The dry wood and straw caught quickly, and before long, the Witch found herself succumbing to the heat – but she knew the nature of fire. It reached for the sky, not the ground.

Isabella had gotten on the ground immediately, tossing a horse blanket into a barrel of water before draping it over her body. She had to crawl, and the heat was still relentlessly unforgiving, but she knew that the fire would not harm her so easily with her 'armor' of water protecting her.

To her relief, the spirits of the Natives' land came to her aid, leading the fire to eat at a rotted old board in the barn wall. It crumbled without the little support that it had had left. She scuttled towards the exit, yelping when a beam fell and caught the corner of the blanket. After some struggle, she realized that she had to abandon the rapidly-drying cloth and made it out of the inferno without a burn on her.

That small miracle was her undoing.

When the townspeople saw Isabella emerge from the flames unscathed, they were beside themselves. They would not listen to reason, they would not allow her to explain – they were at a point where they saw evil everywhere. Like lunatics with no doctor to keep them, without their pastor, their little logic was shattered.

Isabella had failed her Trial by Fire. She was a Witch. For her 'crimes', the colonists locked her in the stocks to succumb to the elements, starvation, and dehydration.

She watched as the spirits lamented her situation, but continued on avenging their human kin. Every night, more children were taken. Now that they were running low on food and the water carried diseases, the once-healthy adults were dying as well. Because she had sympathized with the red people and their plight, and because she was sentenced to starve until dead, Isabella the Witch was living longer than many of the others.

Isabella had no fear. She had always accepted death, although she had always hoped that it would be more comfortable than this, of course. She was a realist, and death was inevitable. That fact didn't lessen her misery now – if anything, it brought her some tiny light at the end of the tunnel. When she died, she believed that she would be born into a new life, where she would have a new calling.

She prayed that it would be teaching overzealous zealots their place.

The sun beat down on her overhead. Men spat at her as they walked home from their fruitless toiling in the field. She was called the Devil's whore, and they didn't even know that the Devil was what they would see in the mirrors of their homes.

Even the Devil had been an Angel once.

**=^T_T^=**

Yeah, I know, this one was more "spiritual" than many horror fans are used to, but don't forget: When it comes to motive, many ghosts can be created due to the nature of their spirituality! Not to mention that they can be simultaneously some of the easiest to manipulate, as well as some of the most hell-bent on haunting their "territory".

Nyaa.

Ya know, suddenly it occurs to me that I'm working on a fanfic about ghosts in a horror story, **Thir13en Ghosts**, one about ghosts in a humor-action story, **Danny Phantom**, and then a crossover of _both_ of these stories. It's kinda funny to me! Haha, don't mind the dork kitty…

Nyaa…


	8. The Great Child and Dire Mother

**Disclaimer:** I own no copyrights to the Thirteen Ghosts' franchise. If I did, people would have known the backstories, and the damn movie would have been waaay too long… I can admit it.

Nyaa.

**=^-w-^=**

"Let me go! Leave me alone!" Margaret's voice was barely a squeak as the tiny woman struggled against her harassers – a group of circus workers that she and her son had lived with for many years.

They tried to shush her as they stuffed her in a sack with ease. Once it was tied shut, her protests and thrashing made the burlap bag as though it had little more in it than a bunch of mice.

One of the circus workers ran to his group, panting as he caught up to them. "Harold's just gotten to their tent! Let me tell you, that big boy is _pissed!"_

"Mommy!" Harold's shout wasn't too far away, making the four men jump. His lumbering warned them that he was coming closer. "Mommy? Mommy!"

"Harold?" Margaret squeaked, and her flailing began anew. "Harold! Mommy's right here! Help!"

"Shush, gorga!" one hissed in Romany, shoving the sack down. "Quick – we have to hide her!"

"Here, put her against the wall. We'll just sit on her!"

The others agreed that this _wasn't_ a bad idea. No matter that she was a mere three feet tall, hardly even fifty pounds, and each of the four of them was roughly between five-foot-five to five-foot-seven tall, and of a healthy weight nearly three times hers. They shoved her onto the ground against the wall of the tent that they were standing near and sat on the poor woman, trying to keep her wriggling and crying as inconspicuous as possible.

Not a moment later, the six-foot-tall, three hundred-pounds-heavy son of Margaret Shelburne came tromping around the corner in his diaper and bib. He frowned unhappily at the four men. "Mommy?"

"What? No, Harry, we haven't seen Maggy!"

"Mommy!" he growled at them.

"I saw her!" The other three looked at their fourth accomplice like he was crazy. "She, uh… She went to see the lumberjacks. At their camp!"

"Jimbo." Harold's face twisted into an angry snarl. His mother was afraid of the gypsies, especially the brawny lumberjack known as Jimbo. He had raped her, although Harold didn't know that, nor that it meant Jimbo was his father. He had no daddy, only his mommy.

With that in mind, Harold stomped off. "Mommy! Harold save you!"

The four men remained still until Harold's footsteps disappeared and his cries were distant before laughing and high-fiving each other. The stupid man-child was just too gullible.

"Alright, alright." the leader said as he stood with the others, picking up the bag. "That's it, Maggy. We'll let ya out now."

The sack was still and quiet. The four of them looked at one another warily as he untied the bag and opened it. Inside, Margaret's eyes were wide open, her lips parted in a silent yelp. Her chest didn't rise or fall.

The man who had come up with the prank stared at the dead woman. "…Oops…"

* * *

><p>Harold returned to the circus camp after scouring that of the lumberjacks. His mother hadn't been there, but that didn't surprise him. He was glad the workers were wrong… But where was Mommy?<p>

"Mommy! Mooommyyy!" he hollered, long and loud. She didn't respond.

Maybe she was asleep, he decided. Frowning, he lumbered back towards the tent that they shared. He would feel better once he saw her.

A burlap bag caught his eye, making Harold stop. He remembered that the four men from before had been sitting there. Had they forgotten it? Should he return it? Curious, he walked over and picked it up – it was surprisingly light.

He looked inside and instantly let loose a primal scream of rage. _"Mommy!"_

Dropping the bag, he began roaring angrily. He picked up and threw anything he could reach, tossing barrels and sacks of potatoes or other produce through the air. He flipped a wagon over, scaring the donkey that stood beside it. The poor animal brayed and bucked, kicking over some wood that was on a chopping block before trotting off as fast as its legs would allow.

Harold looked at the chopping block; it had an axe embedded in it.

"Harold, what the hell are you doing, boy?" the circus master screamed, running out of his tent half-naked. His bedmate peered out of their wagon, wrapped in a sheet. "Where's the donkey? Did you let him run off? I'll kill you _and_ your mother, you son of a bitch!"

"Mommy…?" Harold saw red as he slowly turned around, axe in hand. His beady, black eyes were fixed on the circus master. "You killed Mommy, huh?"

"What?" The circus master stepped back with a puzzled look.

"Boss!"

He turned his head as one of the sideshow freaks – the contortionist, to be precise – sat with a bag in her lap. She pulled Margaret out by the arm, giving their leader a sad, horrified look.

"She's… She dead." The woman looked down at Margaret, then back at Harold. Her eyes went wide. _"Boss!"_

He turned back around just in time to get beheaded by Harold. With a roar, the giant infant of a man ran towards the contortionist, axe raised overhead like a tomahawk. "Leave Mommy alone!"

She screamed and threw up her hands. One went flying off at the wrist, the other midway between the wrist and elbow. The blade stopped halfway through her skull, splitting her face in twain. Her gurgled, continuing scream told the others it didn't kill her.

But then, perhaps the second or third hack did.

Harold ran after the others when the woman stopped screaming, waving his axe around. He wanted their blood on the ground. All of them. They were always teasing him and his mother, always being cruel, and now, Margaret was dead, and he was alone.

As he caught one circus gypsy after another, others got to their stronger brethren at the lumberjacks' camp and told them what they knew; about Margaret's death, about Harold's rage, and about the ones he had already killed. The lumberjacks immediately grabbed their axes and told the women and children to hide in the surrounding trees, where the men would find them once they had killed the large man-child.

Jimbo was the one who headed the group, and he was the first to attack Harold as soon as they laid eyes on him. The two large men fought over Harold's axe, but that was the diversion. While Harold's attention was on Jimbo, the other men had a chance to surround him. They jumped on him, tied him up as though he were a wild pig – a wild pig the size of an elephant.

He screamed at them, swinging his bound wrists when the axe was torn from his grip as a noose was tossed over his head. One of the gypsies ran to a tree and threw the other end of the rope over a large, strong branch. Jimbo and the others ran to the loose end and pulled, hefting Harold into the air with great difficulty.

Harold grunted and flailed as he found his feet without solid ground beneath them, the rope cutting into the fat of his neck. He found himself calling for his mother once more.

He was just a child who wanted his mommy…

**=^-.-^=**

The next one, the Hammer, is my favorite of the ghosts. I never found much depth with these two – probably because their rough draft backstory seems… cliché. Strange, I know, but something about them being either sideshow freaks with a bunch of carnies, or a woman who overfed her son until he choked and fell on her… both options are ridiculous! It's hilarious, so trying to put a serious tone onto the gypsy angle was difficult, especially since I like gypsies.

But, the storyline is what it is, and besides, the whole 'killed by gypsy lumberjacks' angle _does_ make for a good ghost story. So, there was that.

Nyaa.


	9. The Hammer

**Disclaimer:** I don't own rights to 13 Ghosts. I just wanted to write some ghost stories in my free time.

Nyaa.

**=^'.'^=**

The West was supposed to be different for people like him.

George Markley was the town blacksmith. He was a tall man with a strong jaw, and his occupation gave him the body of Samson and Achilles combined. His curse was that he was black, which for nameless reasons was viewed as a crime against humanity in America. Even in the West, even in 1890. Slavery was gone but certainly not forgotten, no matter how far away from the South and their rage from the Civil War a person moved.

"_That's him! He's the one who stole from me!" The local troublemaker and town drunk had stormed into the smithy, followed by a crowd of curious onlookers. "Markley! You give me back the $100 you stole from me, and my family silver!"_

"_Your family ain't never _had_ any silver." George had fixed him with a stern look. How dare the man accuse him of such a despicable act – he broke his back to provide for his family, and teach his two little girls the meaning of pride in working hard._

_The accuser took a step back as the large man stepped forward, intimidated by the deep baritone of George's no-nonsense voice. But he became aware of the crowd once more, turning to them for support. "He's a liar and a thief! We don't need his kind in our town!"_

"_My kind?" George's blood chilled into ice momentarily. "I think you need to crawl on back to the bar, friend. You don't wanna make trouble with me."_

"_You see? Now he's threatenin' me!" The crowd started murmuring as the drunk laid on the razzle-dazzle. "He's just like every other one of them! Lies! Steals! Now he's fixin' to strike me down for demanding some honesty!"_

_Then the man said an awful word. The only word that could pull a reaction out of the burly blacksmith._

_In an instant, George grabbed the liar by the shoulders of his shirt, lifting him a good foot or so off of the dusty ground. "Let me show you the way out." he growled, doing all that he could to stay the urge of punching the sniveling coward. He marched over to the nearby saloon and threw him into the horse's trough._

He had been standing up for himself, his family and his forefathers. No one deserved to say that word, that ugly, six-lettered word.

And no one deserved to do what they'd done to his family.

George stared up at the nightmarish scene. His wife and his daughters were strung up in the tree outside their home, flesh and wood scorched from what he knew to be a horrible hate crime, cleverly disguised as their so-called Frontier Justice.

He was beyond words. A storm rolled inside him, flashing lightning anger and raining unfathomable anguish. Never again would he know the smile of his lover's warm, brown eyes, never again hear the laughter of his girls as they played outside with their dolls. They had been stolen from him by the true thief in this whole mess and a posse of other cowards hiding behind a sham that the rest of the town would turn a blind eye to.

He couldn't turn a blind eye, though. The warm, slowly-rising tears kept his vision clear before it turned malevolent and red.

Before he knew it, he had returned to his smithy and his sledgehammer was in hand. It felt his painful anger and pulsed back its own as though it were a living creature, equally outraged at the loss of its family. Just like that, he felt the affirmation he needed to carry out his own Frontier Justice, and he took the hammer along to help him do it.

The three posse members were still there when George kicked in the front door of the drunkard's house, and the homeowner was the first to go. The man grabbed his victim by the front of his shirt. The sledgehammer nailed him right between the eyes, making blood projectile out in all directions as the force knocked him to the floor.

That was where the real hollering began, as the other three men jumped away from their liquor. It didn't sway George in his rampage; he continued on like a bull, grabbing one man and using his sledgehammer to rip off another assailant's jaw. As that one fell to the ground, gagging on his blood, the third man stared in horror at his friend's wildly-lashing tongue.

George swung the hammer against the arm he held in his hand, causing the elbow to bend the wrong way with a sickening crunch. The captive howled in pain as bone protruded from skin. Another swing to the skull silenced him for good.

Now the last one recovered his ability to speak, and he used it in the worst way possible. He screamed at George for being a murderer, said that word which had started the dark scheme that the night had taken on, called his wife and daughter whores and recanted how they had shrieked about being raped, and then again as they were lit on fire.

The father's stomach turned. His older daughter was only 8 years old.

A single swing to the groin wasn't enough for the final killer. He endured several, each blow making the junction between his hips flatter and flatter. George didn't have time to put the disgusting creature out of his misery – in retrospect, he probably wouldn't have anyway – as a mob of men ran into the house, grabbing at the black man's arms and shoulders, pulling him down and ripping the weapon out of his grasp.

In fury, he screamed curses at them all. "They killed my wife! They raped my children in front of their mama! They set my family on fire still screaming for God to save them!"

His accusations fell on deaf ears. After all, he was a healthy, well-built black man, and he had just killed four shorter men, all four of them either under- or overweight. In a single act, he had turned from the victimized minority to a monstrous example of his people. Yet he had been in the right! He had tried to turn the other cheek once, and he had lost his family!

For what? For a drunk white man with no money, angry and jealous of a black man who took pride in the work he had to the point that he would call Markley a thief and a liar, and tried to make him seem like nothing more than a dumb animal? It was action that separated man from beast – and George Markley was no beast.

They chained him to a tree with the posture of a scarecrow. He cried out as a hatchet buried itself into his left wrist; it took four or five for the attackers to hack their way through the bone, since many of them made money off of each other and not with their hands. The two bones stretched in different directions as they wedged his sledgehammer into the bloody stump.

"This'll teach you, you monster!" someone yelled.

Another cried, "May God forgive your soul!"

But George didn't hear any of what they were saying to him. His mind was drowning in pain – they had begun to drive railroad spikes into his body while he was still breathing. Worse yet, they were railroad spikes that he himself had been working on that very day when the accusations had first flown out of a liar's mouth. The irony was not lost on him; it burned like salt in the wounds he was being given.

Not a single railroad spike killed him, not even the ones driven into his skull and torso. Instead, he was left to die in the elements, chained to the tree just outside of the town. The townspeople tried to position him so that he was staring at the church, but the last thing he saw at the end of three days were his wife and daughters, still hanging in a tree outside their home.

**=^T_T^=**

I hated writing for the Hammer with a passion, I'll admit it. He was my favorite ghost in the movie, and his story destroyed me the most when I read it. Racism is an ugly, ugly thing, and it's painful to know that it was most likely a very strong factor in 1890, even in the West where it was supposedly less prominent.

Of course, that made writing the parts about him killing his family's murderers all the sweeter for me.

Nyaa.


	10. The Jackal

**Disclaimer:**__I do not own any Thir13en Ghosts copyrights.

Nyaa.

**=^-.-^=**

Borehamwood Asylum was his cage, his Hell. What was most painful of all was how he had walked into it of his own accord. The things he had done to women horrified him, but he knew that there was no malicious intent – he didn't _want_ to bite or claw them. It was more like a… a mad _need…_ His teeth would tingle or his fingernails would itch sometimes when he saw a woman, and the rest happened all by itself.

Ryan Kuhn had _wanted_ to be cured of his strange urge. When they blamed it on the fact that his mother was a prostitute, citing that it had given him too much exposure to a woman fallen into the Devil's hands, he paid it no mind. It was 1887, after all – women who were found on the street without their husband or a keeper of some sort weren't the sort to be pitied; what else could they be doing but selling their bodies?

They didn't ask how his mother had treated him. They didn't ask when his urges to hurt the female gender started. They only thought it was strange that his motives weren't more sexually driven. He had only raped two of the five women he had attacked, the first and the last, and there was little in common that they had by way of physical appearance.

What had led him to _those_ attacks was the excitement he had gotten from attacking them. The first attack is exciting for anyone doing anything serious, after all… and attacking a defenseless woman would almost certainly get him in _serious_ trouble. His nerves were alive and any little thing made him jump as he stalked her through the streets, but she never noticed him – not until he attacked.

The last, on the other hand, was different. By then, he was aware of the warning signs that he wanted to tear into a woman's flesh, and it hadn't aroused him sexually since the first attack. Maybe it was because now he knew what sounds he liked, or what places he liked to bite into; the hips were a favorite every time. It was like the first bite of a fresh, ripe peach.

If they had asked, though, the doctors would have known that Ryan's mother brought strange men home and let them cuss at or hit him if he accidentally interrupted their exploits. They would know that she was less-than-caring about him, and that he would occasionally think about harming girls his own age growing up. It wasn't a sexual thing; the arousal was a side-effect of the actions he committed.

Instead, they merely poked and prodded, asked him how he was feeling, and kept him in a little padded cell with a white coat.

His urges just got worse. No matter how much he tried to tell them that something was wrong, the doctors didn't seem to get it. They just had the nurses talk to him in their most polite and cordial manner, under the belief that he would see that not all women were whores, like his mother.

Then he attacked one of them. She was such a nice young woman, too. In all honesty, she was the nicest one, genuinely not looking down her nose at him every time they talked. She asked him what he was thinking about, why _he_ thought he felt bad some days, and even listened and responded while he talked to her.

If she hadn't been talking to Ryan like this, then she would have gotten injured even worse.

The angel had asked, "How are your teeth?"

"Itchy." he'd whimpered, trying to stretch his jaw this way and that. Curling his fingers up, he hugged his hands to his body. "And my fingers tickle."

She gazed at him sympathetically, placing a hand on his shoulder. He didn't flinch away; he liked the connection to humanity. "Do you want me to see if I can get you something? Maybe… Maybe an extra blanket or something? I have a puppy at home who's always chewing on his blanket. I think it helps his teeth… I bet it feels like your teeth do right now."

Ryan stared at her as she turned away to step out of the room. The tingles in his teeth and fingers got worse. He wanted to dig into the flesh… Her neck looked particularly nice. To bite into that soft, creamy-pale throat and just _clench_ his jaw sounded heavenly.

But she was kind, and he could resist the need to chew and claw on her. He didn't want to hurt her, or kill her, or anything of that nature. She was trying to help him, and he recognized that she was the only one who _cared_ on a personal level. The doctors treated him like some… case study.

"No." He winced as she stepped towards him with the spare blanket. "Don't. Don't come closer."

"Mr. Kuhn? Are you okay? Is it… Is it your condition?" She frowned warily, looking concerned.

He nodded. "You… go. You should go. Now. Leave. Please?"

"I'm sorry, I can't. I'm here to help you." She took a step forward. "I know you don't want to hurt anyone. If you do slip, I won't get mad."

True to her word, she didn't get mad when, while handing him the blanket, he lunged and bit on her arm. It was a shallow bite – didn't even break the skin – but she let out a surprised yelp as one of the older, harsher nurses passed by the open door.

After that, they gave him a jacket with longer sleeves, so they could bind his arms. The young nurse was taken away from him and replaced with strict, older nurses. They were old enough to have grandchildren, and his animal instinct told him that they were weaker, easier to attack and kill.

Yes… kill. The more he had to put up with them and their cold words, the more he looked forward to attacking them if they were stupid enough to come near him. He even took to chewing his way out of his straightjacket. It was free dental care to him – God knew that for all their stupidity, they still wouldn't go near his mouth.

Each time they had to put a new jacket on him, they tied it tighter. His ribs crackled and reformed in odd ways. His forearms got longer, and all of their time balled into fists made his fingers more claw-like and hooked. The tips of his fingers were rubbed down to bone; whenever he got excited, he would scratch at the material with everything that he had.

Finally, they put a small cage over his head. It was the only way that they could defend themselves against the teeth that just wouldn't quit. Any time that they tried to get near him with his muzzle on, however, they found that he cowered and screamed in primal ways at them.

He no longer wanted the contact with cruel, stupid humanity.

This was now his Hell, and he was utterly and truly alone. The doctors were minions of the Devil Himself, with the nurses as the lowly minions of minions. The final time that he got his sleeves free, he was ready to fight them off, whatever the cost. His life was forfeit if he wasn't free.

When they opened the door to his cell, now located far below in the Heart of the Underworld, he rushed past them with the cackle of a hyena. They cried out, reaching for him as they tried to stop him. He snarled back and bared his fangs.

"Mr. Kuhn, please! We need to get you out of here!"

Their words were lost on him. They were demon spawn, trying to take him in for more tests, more torture. The dog growled; he would have none of it.

He lunged and swiped at one demon doctor who inched too close, leaving deep gashes on the man's face. The demon screamed and bled crimson blood. The flames of Hell danced around the demons and their victim.

"Don't… Don't touch me…" Ryan turned his eyes as the nurse stepped forward, warning the old bat to stay away with her evil thoughts through a mere stare. "Don't. _Touch._ Me."

"Please, Mr. Kuhn…" The old woman sounded calm and matter-of-fact, but she was scared for her life, and he could hear her heart _pounding_ in her chest.

She was nothing but skin and bone – plenty to chew on. The cage prevented him from attacking, though.

He felt someone grab his shoulder and screamed, backhanding the offender. "Don't touch me!" He ran into the labyrinth, flames roaring around him. _"Don't touch me!"_

"Ryan, wait!" He recognized the voice of the angel, stopped and turned back for a moment. Her eyes were huge and glossy, the fire's reflection dancing in their tears. "Please – it's too dangerous!"

Ryan stared. All he could think of was scratching at her, but instinct told him that she wasn't part of humanity. She was goodness, kindness… Pure.

But she couldn't help him.

He ran deeper into the basement, with the medical team crying out after him. The madman was prepared to run through the gauntlet of the Damned.

He belonged in Hell.

**=^'.'^=**

Ryan reminds me of what I imagine Mad Dog from Batman to have been like, as Amadeus Arkham's first patient, just less… killing-the-doctor's-wife-and-kid-ish. If that makes any sense. It's odd; watching the movie, I genuinely got the impression that _some_ of the ghosts wanted help, or wanted to kill, but the Jackal was the _only_ ghost who I felt was just defending itself like any wild animal would do. Given, that's probably exactly what the producers were going for, but still… I just got a vibe of chaos from him.

Nyaa.


	11. The Juggernaut

**Disclaimer:** I do not own any rights to Thir13en Ghosts. Don't sue me. I'm broke.

Nyaa.

**=^-.-^=**

Breaker Mahoney roared his rage at the intruders in his junkyard. His dogs were dead, and so was the undercover cop who'd called in SWAT. His father had always warned him that something like this would happen if he gave in to his darker nature.

That didn't convince him that he would lose at this game.

"Horace Mahoney! Surrender immediately!" He grunted and shielded his face as the helicopter overhead beamed its light at him.

Like a simple order would subdue him – he'd been ripping women apart for months now! He could tear parts off of cars with his _bare hands!_ Gritting his teeth, he looked at the broken cuff hanging from one of his wrists.

They would pay for invading his sanctuary.

"Horace!" He turned his head. One of the ants in their shiny, black helmets had a gun trained on him. "Put your hands on your head! Where I can see 'em!"

Breaker shifted his shoulders in a small circle. Slowly, he lifted his hands to the back of his head and knelt to the ground. The SWAT didn't notice any of his muscles retaining their tension. Life as an ostracized child taught him that relaxing was an opportunity for someone to attack you.

The best defense was a good offense.

"I've got 'im!" One of the ants marched up to him quickly, as if it had purpose. He lowered his gun and put one of his hands on Breaker's. "We're all good!"

Breaker grabbed one of his hands without a warning and stood, lifting the screaming man with him. The other ants yelled and aimed their guns, issuing their petty little warnings as he held his victim at arm's length like a ragdoll. He studied the terror in those eyes. There was more fear in this man's eyes than in the eyes of any of his _female_ victims.

"Breaker!" One of the other ants was barking at him as he raised his other hand and grabbed his victim's shoulder. The size difference was like that between a lion and a lamb. "Breaker, don't! Hold on a sec…!"

The captive shrieked loudly as his arm was ripped off as if it were made of cloth. The ball of bone popped soundly out of its bloody socket joint after some twisting so that Breaker could look at the range. He even twisted it all the way around in a big, backwards circle before pulling the arm off the rest of the way and tossing it aside.

Now he grabbed the man by his head, muffling the screams of pain. Looking over the toy, Breaker watched for what part to test and look at next. He'd never had a Ken doll, just Barbie after Barbie after… He frowned and grabbed a leg, tipping the crying man upside-down to examine his feet. He remembered, when he was a very young boy and still roughly the same size as other little kids, that girls who played with dolls would always bend at their Kens' toes, trying to make them pointed like Barbie's before giggling as the foot resumed its flat shape.

Breaker grabbed the man's toe and pointed it as far back as he could. The crunch of the ankle felt good in his ear – sort of like breaking the drumstick away from the thigh on a cooked whole chicken. It made him feel a little like he was about to get something good… Maybe he'd have a snack after he was done here…

The other members of the SWAT team watched, horrified, as the giant of a man removed the foot, still in its boot. Breaker seemed unsurprised that it had broken off without his noticing. Toys just weren't meant to bend in certain ways sometimes.

He turned the ant back around. He no longer squirmed or screamed; now, Breaker found his toy had purged its stomach of its contents and now drooled unintelligibly. After watching this for a moment, he wrapped his large paw around the dying man's head. Toys did such strange things nowadays.

He twisted.

Blood spurted everywhere. One of the female cops screamed loudly – probably her comrade's name. People were strange and dramatic like that.

After a few more twists, the bloody mess of hair and skin trapped in a slightly-crushed helmet came off in his hand like the foot had. The ant's head was no longer perfect and shiny black, but now slick and crumpled.

Roaring, Breaker threw the head at the helicopter. There was a distant _thunk_ and the vehicle wobbled uncontrollably.

One by one, the toy soldiers would break. He started towards the next victim, the next cop nearest him.

A crack slapped through the air. Breaker stopped and frowned, unconsciously wrapping his arms around his gut. His belly hurt. Some warm liquid smeared onto his arms, puzzling him for a moment. His innard-juices, he realized; just like his victims, he could bleed, too.

This wasn't the way that the game was supposed to go.

He let out a primal cry before lumbering towards them, picking up speed as he went. Rapid shots could be heard as more cops joined in the gunfire. It didn't do anything to stop him or dissuade the man as he went, smashing his fists into the sides of cars to knock them out of the way. They rolled end over end like tumbleweeds.

Like the evilest version of the Hulk, Breaker used another car as a stepping stool so he could jump through the air, making just enough distance to land on another SWAT member, crushing her chest like a grape. Blood spurted everywhere.

More stinging and dull pain rained on him, on his shoulder, chest and back. He grunted and brought his arms up. Didn't they know he was used to having people throw things at him? Bullets didn't hurt – they just stung. And made him bleed. He didn't worry about the bleeding, though. A bandage could fix that, given a few days.

Grabbing the car behind him, he ripped off the door and threw it at some of the cops. They scattered, regrouped, and kept firing on him. He roared at them, ripping off another projectile.

Each time he tore off a new piece of ammo, however, he couldn't help but notice how tired he was getting. Very, very tired, and sore, too…

He didn't know when he hit the ground. All Breaker knew was that his body ached. At least the world was getting quieter; then he could take a nap. A nice, long nap would help him feel better.

The ants scurried around him, mumbling so that he couldn't quite make out what they were saying. It was strange watching them mumble, though – they looked like they were yelling. Someone was pointing and talking to different people off-and-on. Couldn't they just let him rest in peace?

One stepped up with a handgun, pushing others out of the way as he readied it for firing.

Breaker blinked at the light, once again in his eyes.

Oh.

It was gonna be _that_ kind of nap…

**=^owo^=**

Wowzers, everybody! That was exciting, gruesome and unexpected, wasn't it? Eesh…

Nyaa…

Yeah, before writing this, there had only been _one_ instance in watching the 2006 movie in which I looked at the Juggernaut and thought "he looks like the First-Born Son". I meant it as in he looked like an angry boy who'd just gotten his toy taken away, and I was being a super-smartass about it, but writing this… The way it flowed…

He really does strike me as someone who just couldn't link the pain of others to what he was doing to them. I mean, he was "of such grotesque height and appearance that everyone ostracized him as a child. His mother abandoned him at birth, so his father raised him, putting him to work in the junkyard crushing old cars." Now, I was shunned as a child throughout all of elementary school and most of middle school. Being frozen out like that really retards your social development. Plus, the trauma of having your mother ditch you at birth, _then_ your father – the only thing anchoring you in this world – dies (as he did in the Wikipeida source, which I used for this chapter)… That would really mess a person up. So, I went from him being "driven to madness" and drove him to _maaadness._

_Nyaaaaaa._

Anyway, hope you enjoyed the last chapter! Started off with a brat and ended with a man-child full of homicidal tendencies. Whee!

Nyaa!


End file.
